You may recall that my dearest mommy got me a big ol’ television set for Christmas this past holiday.
Well, I’ve finally got it running at full capacity now that I have a TiVo-HD (got a deal on a refurb from Woot!) and boy is it something.
Of course, the CableCARD install wasn’t perfectly smooth, but at least it turned out to just be a bit of an annoyance while the cable guy fiddled with it for an hour or two. It was definitely not the sort of tragedy I had read about on various TiVo forums, etc.
It’s funny what HD does to you, though. Two words to illustrate my point: Sunrise Earth. My friends (who were all way ahead of me on the HD curve) all told me about this hypnotic show, and I always pointed at them and laughed. Turns out they were right on the money. It’s just mesmerizing. Even beyond that, though, I’ll watch a nature show or rock concert in HD before just about any other option now. Good times.
The Wife’s favorite bit - aside from when I blew her mind by showing her how we can watch shows from our old TiVo unit on the new one - is the dual tuner action we get from the TiVo-HD. Now “Boy shows” don’t automatically trump “Girl shows”. Peace reigns supreme at the Lazy ‘S’ Ranch, though it does give the TiVo twice the opportunity to record one of it’s off the wall suggestions…
I discovered the dual tuners thing by accident before I got my cable cards installed, to whit: I recorded something on ESPN (lets call it Sportscenter), and when I went to ‘live TV’, it wasn’t on ESPN. I told my wife that something was jacked up, and changed the channel several times while checking back to see the progress of Sportscenter, with no problems. Tivo is the bestest!!!!
We might have spent a good 30 minutes this weekend watching dogs catch frisbees on ESPN2 HD
RCN finally just added a slew of new HD channels, but unfortunately not SciFi Channel. Really, RCN, you need to get on this before the new season of BSG starts!
Here are my top three awesome things about DVRs:
1) Hubby can watch *enter “Flash Gordon” or name of other cheesy scifi show here* in the morning so I don’t have to suffer through it.
2) Getting through SNL in 20 minutes ’cause we fast forwarded through the unfunny parts.
3) Getting through Bill Maher’s show in two hours ’cause we keep pausing to yell at the screen or at each other.
You voluntarily watch Bill Maher?! Please tell that’s not in HD…